Wynn Resorts, the casino company that owns the Wynn and Encore properties in Las Vegas and Macau, reported its first-quarter earnings today.
Company: Wynn Resorts Ltd. (NASDAQ: WYNN)
Revenue: $997.7 million, down from $1.09 billion in the first quarter of 2015. The company said that stemmed from a decline in revenue from its operations in Macau, a market where gambling revenue has fallen for 23 consecutive months.
Earnings: $75.2 million, compared to a net loss of $44.6 million during the same period a year ago. Wynn Resorts said its 2016 results reflected an “out-of-period adjustment related to capitalized interest,” which it said reduced interest expense by $25.6 million.
Earnings per share: 74 cents, compared to a net loss of 44 cents per share a year earlier.
What it means: Wynn Resorts again had a better quarter in Las Vegas, comparatively speaking, than it did in the Chinese gambling hub of Macau.
The company said first-quarter revenue from its Las Vegas operations was $389.4 million, up 0.7 percent from last year. In Macau, on the other hand, net revenue was $608.2 million, down 13.8 percent from the first quarter of 2015.
Those figures are in line with the preliminary results Wynn Resorts released in early April. At that time, the company said it expected Macau revenue to be between $603 million and $613 million and Las Vegas revenue to be between $384 million and $394 million.
The company has big plans for its business in Las Vegas. CEO Steve Wynn recently revealed that he wants to develop a huge lake attraction, along with an additional hotel tower, meeting space and more, on land that currently houses the golf course behind his Strip resorts.
Wynn today shed more light on that proposal, tentatively titled Wynn Paradise Park, on a conference call with analysts.
Reiterating that the project still needed approval from his company’s board of directors, Wynn said the vision had changed a bit since he first unveiled the plans in early April. He elaborated on some of the details of what he envisioned.
The casino mogul said the lake had been extended some 600 feet and that in the middle of it would be “a mountain, an island” eight to ten stories tall featuring “irregular topography” and twin peaks connected by a rope bridge.
He also spoke of “cabanas and other special effects platforms” built into the side, a “beach bar with white sand,” ferries in the lake and zip lines.
Wynn said that at its current phase, the creative process for a project like Paradise Park was “very dynamic” and changing “on a weekly basis.” He said cost per foot would be resolved as ideas were fleshed out, but he indicated that his company had grand ambitions for the development.
“We’re not just building a body of water with a promenade around the edge — the American public has seen that before,” Wynn said. “When we do something here, we do something that hasn’t been seen before.”
Outside Las Vegas, the company’s $4.2 billion Wynn Palace is scheduled to open in Macau in the third quarter of this year. Wynn Resorts also has plans to build a casino near Boston for an expected budget of $1.9 billion to $2.1 billion.